Now that the age during which all human civilization developed is ending, it might be time to pay more attention to the experience of those whose world has already ended -- indigenous peoples. Depending on how you count them, there may be up to three hundred million indigenous people still on the planet. Most are survivors of colonialism. The genocide of the Native Americans was the beginning of the modern world for Europeans, but the former remain as veritable end of the world experts. Models for restoring our relationship with the Earth exist in the cultures of indigenous peoples, whose values and skills have enabled them to survive centuries of invasion and exploitation.
Native American Perspectivism
Establishing a relation to indigenous thought and practice is no simple task. For Western relativism, there is one nature, but there can be many cultures, and it sets about studying, documenting and classifying them. Here cultures could be thought as specific ways of drawing analogies. The indigenous world operates very differently. Native American conceptions are grounded in perspectivism: the philosophical view that the world forms a complex of interacting interpretive processes in which every entity views every entity and event from an orientation peculiar to itself. It is structured by a universality of spirit and a diversity of bodies. A multinaturalism exists that is the polar opposite of our multiculturalism. In multiculturalism, there is one nature and different cultures. In multinaturalism, there is one culture (spirit/soul) and different natures. It implies that everything is alive, sentient, and shares a common spiritual essence.
Another way to view the difference is to put it like this: Westerners see themselves physically as animals and spiritually different; Native Americans see themselves spiritually as animals and physically different. Native American groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours -- in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own. Every relatable entity is conceived as having, whatever its bodily form, a soul -- intentionality and apperception -- of a "human" character, and that all beings thus perceive themselves as humans, and other beings as animals. While viewed by humans as animals, animals and other beings view themselves as humans and live in conditions similar to humans; that is, they have a social life similar to those who inhabit a Native American village.
Jaguars, for example, are thought to see themselves as humans, to see humans as human prey like deer, and their own food as that of humans. Successfully negotiating one's relations with other beings therefore requires adopting their perspectives, as shamans do when they shapeshift into animals, in order to know what they see things as being, and thereby in turn anticipating and knowing them as definite beings. Shamanism is a practice of escaping from the limits of a human perspective, crossing borders into the social worlds of other species, administering relations between natures.
The Mythical Paradise
To better understand Native American perspectivism, it is necessary to explore its mythological aspects. Native Americans were cosmocentric rather than ethnocentric. Native American myths take place at a time when the cosmos' multiple entities shared a collective human condition and were thus able to communicate with each other. The mythology and creation stories of all indigenous peoples speak of a primordial, but now lost paradise in which humanity lived in harmony with all that existed. The cosmos had total access to itself. There was but one language for all creatures and elements. Humans were able to converse with animals, birds, minerals, all nature's creations.
While in the primeval times, all beings were perceived as humans and nonhuman at the same time, or in a flux of constant transformation into one or another of these forms. Mythical animal characters are often portrayed as essentially human in bodily makeup, but possessed the individual characteristics of animals as they exist in nature today. Myths describe how, at some point, this generic human condition suffers severe disruption, which results in the transformation of the numerous types of humans that existed -- already differentiated by the physical or behavioral traits characteristic of the nonhuman beings they would later become -- into the different present-day species of animals, plants and other kinds of beings.
After the cosmic rupture, the shaman became essential as he could reconstitute the mythical paradise. In our day, as is times past, the shaman is able to access the mythic realm of reality through techniques of ecstasy. Shamanism is based on the principle that the social worlds of other species may be contacted through the inner senses in ecstatic trance, induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. The act of entering an ecstatic trance state is called the soul flight or shamanic journey, and it allows the journeyer to once again communicate with animals, plants, and all living things. Shamans believe that this direct communication is possible because the entire universe exists within human consciousness.
The Dismemberment Journey
In shamanism, there is an archetypal visionary experience known as the dismemberment journey. The student or practitioner of shamanism recognizes an illusion or fear that diminishes or impedes the expansion of their soul. The practitioner prays for this flaw to be healed and in doing so, surrenders to the wisdom of the "Higher Powers" of the universe to restore that which is broken. In a classic dismemberment journey, the petitioner witnesses their own body being torn apart and perhaps completely destroyed. The individual dies a symbolic death and is then restored and brought back to life, whole and empowered, the fear or illusion vanquished.
From an indigenous perspective, the Anthropocene represents a mass shamanic dismemberment -- the experience of being taken apart, devoured, or torn to pieces on a global scale, allowing for a shift of awareness and transformation of collective consciousness. At its deepest level, the dismemberment experience dismantles our old identity. It is a powerful death-and-rebirth process. The experience of being stripped, layer by layer, down to bare bones forces us to examine the bare essence of what we truly are.
Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, the modern discoverer of ritual trance and sacred postures, notes that Siberian shamans considered dismemberment to be an essential phase of initiation for healers. Goodman researched and explored ritual body postures as a means to achieve a bodily induced trance experience and discovered that this archetype appears to be universal. In her trance work with Westerners, those who experienced spontaneous dismemberment visions were invariably destined to become various kinds of healers.
Completing this restorative rite is precisely the task of the shaman. As Joan Halifax explains in her book Shamanic Voices, "The shaman is a healed healer who has retrieved the broken pieces of his or her body and psyche and, through a personal rite of transformation, has integrated many planes of life experience: the body and the spirit, the ordinary and nonordinary, the individual and the community, nature and supernature, the mythic and the historical, the past, the present and the future." The cure for dismemberment is remembering who we actually are. As Halifax puts it, "To bring back to an original state that which was in primordial times whole and is now broken and dismembered is not only an act of unification, but also a divine remembrance of a time when a complete reality existed."
How Can We Restore Our Broken Reality?
To restore our broken reality, we can become hollow bones. Frank Fools Crow was a revered Lakota Holy Man who taught that you must become like a hollow bone to be a great healer. He believed that to become a conduit for the source of all creation fulfills the destiny of the human spirit: to sustain the order of existence. According to Fools Crow, "We are called to become hollow bones for our people, and anyone else we can help. When we become hollow bones there is no limit to what the Higher Powers can do in and through us in spiritual things."
To become a hollow bone, create sacred space as you would for other spiritual work. Close your eyes and breathe slowly and deeply. Focus on the breath as it enters the nose and fills your lungs, and then gently exhale any tension you might feel, clearing the energy channels of your body. Release all of your worldly concerns, doubts, and fears, allowing them to drift off on the air of the wind, on the breath of life. Feel yourself relaxing with each breath.
When you are fully relaxed, ask the Higher Powers to remove any blockages that prevent you from functioning as a hollow bone. Repeat the affirmation, "I choose to be a clean, hollow bone." Visualize yourself as a hollow bone or tube that is all shiny on the inside and empty. The cleaner the bone, the more energy you can channel through it, and the faster it will flow.
Now pick up a drum and stroke a slow, steady heartbeat rhythm, gradually increasing the tempo and intensity. The steady lub-dub, lub-dub of a heartbeat rhythm has a calming and centering affect. It generates a magnetic energy that is yin, intuitive, and receptive in nature. Magnetic energies are descending forces conducive to great healing, mind, and regenerative powers. This healing pulse draws the energy of the original cosmological pattern down into the Earthly realm, helping to align the circle of life with the original intention for the Earth. One of the most pervasive traditions of shamanic cultures is the insight that there exists a patterned cosmological order, which can be disturbed by human activity.
Focus your attention on the sound of the drum, thereby stilling the chatter in your mind. Allow the drum to empty you. Become one with the drum. As you drum, imagine the unifying spirit of the divine source flowing through you. Visualize a spiral of energy descending from the heavens above, entering your hollow bone and traveling down into the earth. You may feel it, see it, sense it, or simply imagine it. As you focus on it, it will occur, for all energy follows thought. When it feels appropriate, gradually decrease the tempo and intensity of your drumming. Visualize yourself fully grounded in your body, and then slowly open your eyes.
Generation Anthropocene
A Stanford University team has boldly proposed that -- living as we are through the last years of one Earth epoch, and the birth of another -- we belong to "Generation Anthropocene." In the Anthropocene age, we are undergoing a transition to a new realization of consciousness. The acceleration of planetary crises can either incite a planetary awakening and a shift into a regenerative planetary culture based on shamanic wisdom and sustainable principles, or a destruction of human civilization in its current form, and perhaps extinction for our species. We're all responsible, for better or worse. We are navigators of the Anthropocene -- attempting to find our way to a new home.
